


sleep

by r1ker



Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 22:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6539239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>instrumental vibes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL_RH8A1V-M</p>
    </blockquote>





	sleep

**Author's Note:**

> instrumental vibes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL_RH8A1V-M

Lucas ought to be suspicious of just how easy it was to settle in with the son of his best friend. From the minute they'd fallen asleep in the same hotel room together he'd known that there'd be no question as to their ability to live together. Alton was quiet, polite when he did speak, and in the way he held himself Lucas saw Roy. He laughed at whatever corny jokes Lucas could come up with to stop him from being so quiet all the time, swapped comics silently with his own father who was still interested in them even at his current age. Lucas was smitten, and Roy could only be described as terrified at what the world held for his son.

 

Roy walks on pins and needles when the two are sitting near each other, having gone so long with it just being him and his son that even a familiar and pleasant face still brings up unwarranted concern. He's been wound up since they got through the last of the hurdles the FBI had thrown up and now, now Roy's in parental overdrive. Something in him makes sure Alton has what he needs before tending to his own needs.

 

Lucas has seen Roy on the verge of collapse and sees him on that very same cliff's edge now, up from dawn that morning until the approach of the new day. Now he is standing against the doorframe to Alton's new room in the home they've made for themselves. Lucas does what he seems to be programmed to do, walk behind Roy and rest up against him to provide another source of strength. He can see Roy's eyes catch on the flickering night light Lucas had rigged up in the corner of Alton's bedroom.

 

"If you fall asleep standing up neither me nor Alton are liable for whatever head injury you get hitting the crown molding," Lucas murmurs with his cheek pressing into the soft cotton covering Roy's shoulder. A few more minutes pass and the both of them watch Alton slip away into a deeper sleep, both of his arms crossing over his head, tousle of hair burying further into the pillow.

 

"I'd fall asleep next to his crib when he was a baby," Roy mumbles, easing Lucas off of him to change their contact and hold the other's hand. "I'd wake up about four hours into it, have the imprint of the crib bars on my face. He'd still be out of it. Never had a problem sleeping for whom he is, that's what. I'd feed him, try and tucker him out as best as I could, and once he was down on the mattress and a blanket over his legs… out he went."

 

Lucas can't say the same for himself. He hadn't had a good night's sleep in twenty years before he rejoined Roy in rest. At one point in the night he'd wake up, spent two hours sitting outside in the brisk cold of the night to try and find himself again, try and find what it was like to feel again. Most of the time it ended up with him sitting out on a front porch in his boxers feeling the wind blister his bare feet and his shoulders. Either way it had been an effort to regain what his life had taken from him.

 

Now he goes to bed warm head to toe, be it from Roy's resting body near him or the countless sheets he's always needed to drift off. He longs for that now. So he eases Roy back to the bedroom a realtor had told them was _perfect for two_ and shuts the door behind them, leaving just enough space in the cracked door to satisfy Roy's need to hear Alton in the night should anything arise.

 

The two men stand toe to toe in the center of the room, a safe distance away from the welcoming bed. Lucas divests him of his shirt, running hands across freckled shoulders in the process. Since they reunited he can't stop touching Roy, can't find it in himself to keep his hands anywhere that's not Roy's body. He drags his lips across Roy's cheek, wraps himself around him. "I know you worry. Too much for someone like you, if you had to ask me." Roy nods against him, hands kept against his chest working to free Lucas of his own shirt.

 

"It's getting easier," Roy confesses as the two move towards the bathroom, lights still off but enough being cast into the room by way of the streetlamps outside to make the path to the sink visible. He and Lucas brush their teeth, dig out clean white night shirts from the stack in the master closet. Even in this new and frugal lifestyle both are still able to retire for the night in a comfortable fashion, in both accommodation and presence of one another.

 

"I only check to make sure he's breathing only twice in the night." Lucas huffs a little laugh at that. He can totally see Roy precariously placing his finger beneath Alton's nose to detect the airflow even though a quick glance of the boy's rising and falling chest would say it all.

 

Lucas goes back into the bedroom to ready the bed, turns down the sheets with the only sound being the whisper of the cotton against itself as he pulls back comforter and top sheet. He wastes no time in climbing onto his own side, closest to the door but in no way hindering Roy's ability to get down the hall and to Alton's room should the need arise. Roy comes in soon after, turning out the last of the lights and pulling the door to just a little.

 

When Roy climbs in next to him Lucas's arms unfold from his chest automatically. Doing what they'd do before it all got so different, he huddles Roy close to him, buries his nose in the man's hair. Beneath the smell of his hair, the shampoo they both shared earlier that morning, he catches something else lingering on the rough scruff of the man's cheek wafting off. "You used my aftershave this morning, didn't you?" He can almost feel Roy's smile in his chest.

 

"Hard to reach for my own when my brain was still frazzled from having you huddled up next to me beneath the shower spray, now isn't it?" Touché. Not like he was going to raise a fuss about it. It's always been fun to poke at Roy like this, see him give back as good as he was getting.

 

"I took a lot of showers alone when you were away from me, so forgive me if I'm still warming up to having someone else in there with me," Lucas explains and Roy sputters, kisses the underside of his chin in false sympathy. He sighs in response to the affectionate gesture. "A lot of being alone. Too much for one person to bear, really." Roy's gone quiet against him, breathing slowing in that telltale rhythm of impending sleep. Lucas's hand strokes the back of his head, revels in the feel of soft hair beneath his fingertips. "The last few years, you had Alton. Out of the two of us I always saw you being the parent type. I couldn't take care of a fish let alone a little kid but you, you took to it like no one else had. That's something you've got a knack for, you know that? Making do with what you had. That's admirable, that's worth it all to me. All the time I went without you, the silence I had to sit in without you talking to me about anything."

 

He figures now, with the darkest point of night settling in the space of the bedroom and making it hard to see much of anything past a few inches, that it's time to go to sleep. This time, it's not alone; it's not in a hotel room after the pity fuck had left. It's with the love of his life he had to wait twenty years for something like this, and he'd wait another twenty if he had to. The wait was worth it all, and with it came much more than a reunion. It meant a family.

 

Lucas takes his free hand not coupling Roy to his chest and pulls the blankets up high over the two of them, covering all of Roy except the top of his head. The last thing Lucas says before he closes his eyes – "It was worth it."


End file.
